‘ALL HANDS ON DECK’

03.06.13

Yahoo Policy Meant to Boost Morale

CEO of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer. (Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty)

Marissa Mayer is not trying to be a buzzkill, she just wants to boost morale. That’s how Yahoo explains its CEO’s much-ballyhooed decision to ban working from home, requiring her employees to come into the office and collaborate in person with one another. Current and former Yahoo employees have agreed that Mayer’s move was not a declaration of war on telecommuting in general, but a solution specifically tailored to the problems plaguing Yahoo, such as low morale and hordes of employees whose work-from-home arrangements resulted in little work actually done for the company and enough free time to work on their own startups.